Re: [Freedos-devel] mkey keyboard

[Ralf Q. <fre...@gm...>]

On 12/31/2021 9:19 AM, Wilhelm Spiegl wrote:
> mkeyb supports a lot of keyboard layouts e.g. "gr" for german etc.
> FreeDOS uses the set lang= xy variable for many country related things.
> but the gr etc. in mkeyb xy differ from this variable that is used for 
> nls, help etc.
>
> Would it be possible to change the country characters in mkeyb e.g. 
> german from "gr" to "de" and so on so that it is possible to say 
> "mkeyb %lang%" to get the correct keyboard layout in FD without big 
> problems?
> This would be a great help for the users and for Jerome.

Well, no,not really.

As Tom already mentioned, those keyboard layout codes have always been 
that way, since the first version of DOS that had a KEYB "driver". And 
for compatibility reasons, this should be the same.

The reason for GR instead of DE is that all those abbreviations are 
derived from the English language, as in "GeRmany", not "DEutschland". 
Hasn't been a problem though either, as there was, at least not 
officially AFAIK, a GReek KEYB option. For the same reason it is SP for 
SPain (not ESpana), HU for Hungary (not Magyar), though they chose SU 
for SUomi  instead of FI for Finland (not sure if that was a stab 
against the then still existing Soviet Union, LOL).

You also need to understand that the keyboard layout codes are NOT 
identical with the "language" being used (for example in translations), 
as for example both US and UK are for different keyboard layouts used in 
the US of A and the United Kingdom, even though they both are supposed 
to be English Speaking countries. Same goes for FR and CF, which defines 
the keyboard layout for FRance and French Canada respectively, though 
the on screen language in both cases is French. Or PO and BT for 
POrtugal and BRazil, which both use (some form of) Portuguese.

I don't have an easy way to test this right now in any Windows version, 
but I am pretty sure that a similar distinction exists there as well, 
though those settings are there made within a GUI tool not by using 
command line parameters line in DOS...

Ralf



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